A couple of years ago I wrote an article about this area. One thing is clear: the use of private military contractors is not going away soon and can often have benefits. As such I proposed that rather than looking to legislation alone, the U.S. government, which accounts for massive portions of many private military contractors income stream, should take an old school contract approach to the jurisdiction problem. In short if the government wants to be serious about the issue, it can simply demand that any contractor adhere to human rights and international laws and agree to U.S. jurisdiction over common crimes. An additional legislative layer is required, however. Protection for whistleblowers is vital for any criminal or profiteering law to have teeth. These events occur far away and when people have come forward as happened in Bosnia, the company involved was quick to try and paint those who spoke up as trouble makers with all the usual employment repercussions. Peter Singer’s work in the area details much of the problem and is worth a read. My paper, Have Your Cake and Eat It Too: A Proposal for a Layered Approach to Regulating Private Military Companies, covers some of the history of the use of PMCs by governments and NGOs, the way PMCs can be used well, the reasons international law falls short of addressing many of the issues that are bound to arise, and then offers a possible solution to at least make sure that when crimes occur people know about them (a real problem in many cases), and they can be prosecuted. There is of course much to do in this area. The paper seeks to be a starting point.

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Deven Desai

Deven Desai is an associate professor of law and ethics at the Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology. He was also the first, and to date, only Academic Research Counsel at Google, Inc., and a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy. He is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and the Yale Law School.
Professor Desai’s scholarship examines how business interests, new technology, and economic theories shape privacy and intellectual property law and where those arguments explain productivity or where they fail to capture society’s interest in the free flow of information and development. His work has appeared in leading law reviews and journals including the Georgetown Law Journal, Minnesota Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review, and U.C. Davis Law Review.

“Qui tam cases from Iraq are investigated by an F.B.I. unit in Rock Island, Illinois. According to Grayson, the unit has a “standing order” to get approval from the attorneys at Vinson & Elkins before questioning anyone at Halliburton or KBR. “F.B.I. agents are not supposed to politely ask permission,” he says. “The most common interview technique by the F.B.I. is a knock on your door at nine o’clock at night. They’re not allowed to do that when it comes to Halliburton and KBR employees.” (In its e-mailed statement, the D.O.J. said it cannot comment on how any Iraq case has been investigated; Vinson & Elkins did not respond to a request for comment.)”